Since very early times, harps have seen widespread employment in a great diversity of different types of music. During the Renaissance, composers made extensive use of the harp because of its unique ability to respond to subtle variations in the manner in which it is played together with its ability to produce a wide range of notes at the same time. For this reason, the harp has survived as a popular instrument to the twentieth century. This popularity has continued after introduction of the harpsichord which allowed a more mechanistic approach to operation of the harp and even of the piano-forte which only served to partially restore the responsiveness of the harp to the player.
Nevertheless, the harp has not made the transition to popular twentieth century music. This has occurred because of a number of understandable problems. First of all, the harp is a relatively heavy and cumbersome device not easily transportable by a band or other musical group. In its simplest form, it is a diatonic instrument and addition of the mechanical systems for making the harp a chromatic instrument poses other problems. In addition, a chromatic instrument becomes somewhat more delicate and liable to breakage, and, accordingly, even harder to move from one place to another. In addition, operation of the instrument is also complicated by the addition of pedals or other mechanisms necessary to achieve chromatic operation.
In order to make the transition into, for example, rock and roll music, the harp also suffers from the problems of being a mechanical instrument. Pick-up via a microphone is clumsy due to the large distance over which strings are disposed. Likewise, spurious vibrations, harmonics and the like are a serious problem with conventional vibrating string pick-ups, such as those in an electric guitar. These problems would be further worsened by the use of a conventional chromatic arrangement, slightly improper actuation of which would, for practical purposes, disable the instrument.
Some attempt has been made at solving these problems by the implementation of harp voices in electronic organs. While this has had the effect of introducing harp-like sounds into popular music, such instruments fall far short of the responsiveness of a conventional harp to the player.